Magdalena
by Tris'sLightningQuill
Summary: Sharon Shinn's Samaria series, namely Archangel and Angel-Seeker. Didn't know where else to post this, if you know pls let me know. A series of drabbles, focusing on Maga's character and her relationship with Nathan. Might add more later, dunno. R&R!


**The first glimpse she caught was of a tangled thicket of dark brown curls. Though the little angel cowered behind their father's wings, though she shrank in on herself and pulled her shoulders close to her chest, a tumble of sable ringlets still flowed out from beneath his arm, giving her away.**

**Ariel stood on tip-toe, listing to one side for a better look around her mother's shielding arm, her slanted hazel-green eyes curious and bright beneath the severe fringe of honey-brown hair on her brow. She stretched to peep into the bundle in her father's arms, her light nightdress lifting above her ankles, her dappled vanilla wings spread in unconscious empathetic effort. Her father's face was etched with hard, grim lines, and his eyes were sad and old, which troubled four-year-old Ariel, but the enigma cradled in one arm and half-hidden in the crook of his wing was too interesting to put aside. It rustled, and hiccuped, and snuffled, and it had dark curling hair just like her father's.**

**Her father knelt down—mud cracking on his tall flying boots and crumbling on the stone of the foyer—and met her gaze with his solemn brown eyes, beckoning her forward with only a look, before turning his face down to the creature huddled in his embrace. Ariel danced forward, twitching her pinions impatiently from her mother's absent hold, and put her hands on her father's forearm, peering down with all the sagacity of her scant four years—though she was tall and spindly enough to have the appearance of a more advanced child—and all the ceremony awarded the first look over the lip of any new cradle.**

**The angel-child—a little girl—had a pale heart-shaped face and a mass of dark hair that hung around her wide, somber eyes. There was fear in those eyes, Ariel saw, and wept inside for the confusion and wariness that should never touch one so young. A thumb was stuck firmly into the small mouth, and the child regarded Ariel with wary attention, her big, round eyes flicking to match the movement of Ariel's own. The older girl smiled down at the toddler, reaching out a slim hand to stroke the soft, unlined brow, touch with reverence the dirty streaks left by tears on the round cheeks, take the tiny balled fist delicately in her own fingers and wave it gently about. Above the heads of the children, father exchanged glances with mother, of wide-eyed wonder for the ready acceptance of children, but there was a chariness there, too, an untrusting edge that was almost like hurt, and never wholly went away. Ariel's father was the first to look away.**

**He set the child down on the cobblestones of their Montverde apartment, and the little girl sat hard, adjusting to the shock of the cold after the warmth of angel-flesh embracing her. Downy feathers of pure white spread like an aura around her, fanning, as the tiny wings windmilled to keep her shaky new hold on balancing her thirty-six month old body. For a moment, her lips trembled around the incorrigible thumb, and instantly Ariel folded to the ground in front of her, crooning, smiling, stroking corkscrew locks and tiny fingers and delicate snow-colored feathers.**

"**This is your sister, Ariel." her father said quietly from somewhere far above her. "Magdalena."**

"**Hello, Maga," Ariel murmured, bending close to nuzzle her nose against the babyish snub above the fist still resolutely jammed into the mouth.**

**And that was the end of it.**

*****

"**Well?" Ariel demanded again. "Do you like him?"**

"**Yes," Maga blurted, "No. Maybe. I don't know!" Her snow-white wings billowed out behind her in her agitation. She was never much good at lying, and with Ariel it was harder than most.**

"**Is he handsome?" her sister persisted, grinning slyly.**

"**I—I suppose." she stammered. "Yes."**

"**Have you kissed him?" Ariel shot, her expression positively wicked.**

"**No!" Maga shrilled, jumping up off the bed, wings shot out wide behind her in unconscious support of her emphatic negative.**

"**Peace, peace!" Ariel giggled in submission, holding her hands up before her face as Magdalena hurriedly ordered her ruffled feathers. "I didn't mean anything by it, anyway."**

**Maga didn't answer, combing her fingers through her curls to dislodge the down caught in her hair, shook loose by her sudden flailing of her wings. Ariel was done with fledging all ready, of course, but although Magdalena was younger by nearly a year and a half, it discomfited her to have down in her hair while Ariel sat there, sleek as anything.**

"**It's fun," Ariel commented pointedly, and Maga wrinkled her nose in distaste. The older angel stretched her long legs out in front of her on the bed in the space her half-sister had so recently occupied. "Some boys are most obliging. Wings are an attractive feature, and a great advantage if it's pleasure you're after."**

**Magdalena just barely kept herself from turning to glare at Ariel, her face hot with mortification.**

"**How are you doing with Seth?" Ariel inquired after a long moment of silence, waving the white flag of peace that lead to safer topics than handsome boys she hadn't kissed. Maga was glad just then, to be reminded of the angel who had volunteered to instruct her in the niceties of flight in place of the angel parent whose task this usually was. Just then, though she hated herself for it, Maga was glad to be reminded that her father was dead, because it took her mind off what she must not tell Ariel.**

**Magdalena pulled a face and sank onto the pillow beside her sister on the wide bed they were sharing tonight. "Not great." she admitted. "I'm fine with maneuverability, and he's praised my take-offs more than they probably deserve. But when we get to durance, I start to flag: it takes the breath I need to sing to tread my wings fast enough to **_**stay**_** aloft." She drew her knees up to her chin and spread those self-same wings around her shoulders like a tent.**

"**I'll fly with you tomorrow," Ariel offered amiably. "If you help me with my verses."**

**Maga smiled her thanks, and obligingly turned so Ariel could more easily plait her heavy curls.**

"**You know," Ariel murmured after a while, "if you ever **_**do**_** start kissing them..."**

"**No," Magdalena interjected flatly. Just when she was feeling smug she'd avoided the hot coal so nicely, here Ariel hadn't forgotten at all.**

"**You should talk to Mother." she finished as though Maga hadn't spoken.**

**Maga pressed her lips together and did not respond. Though she wouldn't have admitted it to Ariel for the world, Magdalena wanted only as much truck with her sister's mother as was absolutely necessary.**

"**Or me." Ariel added easily. "Any time, you know that. Anything."**

"**You as well," Magdalena murmured, demurring to thank Ariel and make this even worse. No, she **_**couldn't**_** tell her just anything, couldn't talk to her about the handsome boy—not boys—and why she wouldn't—couldn't—kiss him.**

*****

**There was light spilling over behind her eyes, bright shards of crystal topaz, light like liquid amber and autumn sunshine, and a fountain of ecstasy bubbling in her middle. Where his lips met hers, there was a ring of fire that was hard and soft at once, painful and yet pleasant. But there was another pain, a muted stabbing in her arm, and when the ecstatic shock of Nathan's kiss began to wear away, she opened her eyes to see if perhaps his grip bruised. Magdalena opened her eyes and saw her own Kiss, shining like a little multicolored candle in the arm she had carelessly flung around Nathan's neck. Her eyes went wide in an almost primordial panic, and she jumped back two long paces, scrubbing her hands on her arms. Nathan, distracted from her sudden mood-swing by the light flickering in his own Kiss, stared, gripping his forearm as if to halt some creeping poison, as if he could be strong enough to be his own tourniquet, his face a mask of consternation.**

**For a long moment they stood, shocked, frozen; unmoving, unspeaking, numb. Then Maga spoke in a soft, tremulous voice, shattering the crystal prism that locked them both.**

"**I have to go." She turned and began to flee down the alleyway, her mind blank and responsive only to the confused and mixed signals sent by adrenaline and endorphins.**

"**Maga!" he called after her, and was suddenly at her side, gripping her arms hard, hard, his brown eyes wide and wild. "Maga, wait."**

"**No," she whispered. "I can't see you again, Nathan." Each word fell and hung like stones around her neck. She tugged at his hold, half-heartedly at first, but with increasing vehemence as her resistance brooked no response.**

"**Magdalena!" he exclaimed "Please! I know you're scared—Don't you think I am? But—Maga, wait!" she wriggled and struggled, gradually loosening his death grip. His words half slid off her ears like water on oiled parchment, and half were branded into her soul. "Maga, I think...I think I love you."**

**Abruptly, her struggling ceased, and she stood like a ghost in his arms, utterly still. Her mind was still and horrified, her eyes plastered open but unseeing, and she whispered so softly he almost didn't hear, "I think I love you too." In the moment when both their guards were down and neither expected it, she wrenched away from him and spun, sprinting towards the mouth of the alley and the bright, crowded streets of Velora. **

**In three strides there was adequate clearance for her wings, and she flung herself aloft mid-stride, catching air and grabbing at it, clawing huge wingfuls from the air to haul her into the sky. Nathan called her name once, but did not chase after as she dreaded he would, for undoubtedly he was a faster flier. Magdalena was not sure when she began to cry, but the wind cut icy rivulets into her cheeks as she climbed, higher and higher, up and over the bustling city, away from the Eyrie where Ariel was, and no doubt Gabriel as well. She never looked down, and kept up her vertical dive until the clouds were a rolling white sea far below her and the air was thin and cold even to an angel's lungs.**

**Maga didn't know any supplications for peace—only weather intercessions and pleas for medicine. So she sang a song without words, a melody broken by the sobs of emotion she could not name, and cracked into a range higher than her mezzo.**

**It was the **_**first rule**_**. When she finally got up the courage to ask of the ways between men and women—or, more specifically, angel women and mortal men—that was one of the first cautions. Even before that, through process of osmosis and half-true scare-stories from the other young angels, Maga had heard of the Lucifers and demons begot of such unions. Indeed, the couples themselves were often given the same connotation. **_**It doesn't work. It's not meant to be like that. It's wrong.**_** Maga told herself over and over, trying quell her own feelings against the paragons she had been raised to adhere. **_**But why, then? Why? **_

**In her torture and confusion, she glanced down and caught amber and beryl lights glinting in the depth of the Kiss grafted to her arm. **_**Mistake, mistake,**_** Maga tried to tell herself, although no matter how many times she repeated those two most likely syllables, she could not quite believe them. **_**My fault, then? Wishful thinking? But then why would his light up as well?**_

**There were no answers, only more questions, and accusations. **_**Broken. Broken, you're different, you don't work right.**_

**Her song**__**escalated almost to a scream, and hot tears poured from her eyes to freeze on her cheeks. Anything, anything, to shut out this fear and doubt, even to close her wings and fall...fall...it was a fleeting thought, hastily squashed. She would **_**never**_**! Besides, then she would not see Nathan again. Maga opened her eyes and uncovered the Kiss she had been shielding with her hand. A soft glow bloomed there, which sparkled when she repeated his name in her head.**

_**Not wrong, then.**_** No, not wrong when her Kiss lit by no power of her own—she had to, she **_**must**_** believe that—and at last felt a modicum of calm flow back into her through the warm lights dancing faintly in her arm. She could not change how she felt about Nathan, and she did not want to. She did not understand why it must **_**be**_** Nathan, but, Maga decided eventually, she did not have to.**


End file.
